This
online rhetoric,provided by Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham
Young University, is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance
rhetoric. Sometimes it is difficult to see the forest (the big picture)
of rhetoric because of the trees (the hundreds of Greek and Latin terms
naming figures of speech, etc.) within rhetoric.

This site is intended to help beginners, as well as experts, make sense
of rhetoric, both on the small scale (definitions and examples of specific
terms) and on the large scale (the purposes of rhetoric, the patterns
into which it has fallen historically as it has been taught and practiced
for 2000+ years).

A forest is the metaphor for this site. Like a forest, rhetoric provides
tremendous resources for many purposes. However, one can easily become
lost in a large, complex habitat (whether it be one of wood or of wit).
The organization of this central page and the hyperlinks within individual
pages should provide a map, a discernible trail, to lay hold of the utility
and beauty of this language discipline.

Don't be scared of the intimidating detail suggested by the odd Greek
and Latin terms. After all, you can enjoy the simple beauty of a birch
tree without knowing it is Betula alba and make use of the shade
of a weeping willow without knowing it is in fact Salix babylonica.
The same is possible with rhetoric. The names aid categorization and are
more or less conventional, but I encourage you to get past the sesquipedalian
labels and observe the examples and the sample criticism (rhetoric in
practice). It is beyond the definitions that the power of rhetoric is
made apparent.

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